The rural South has long been a popular location for the installment of military bases. Small Southern communities around these installations have experienced many social and economic changes due to operational changes in the base. Even the slightest alterations have a ripple effect on residents who rely on the base for local economic stability. Although many studies have examined the impacts associated with military base closures, this paper addresses a related but not identical problem. Using a combined rural sociological and agricultural and applied economic perspective, an analysis is made which examines the local social and economic disruption caused by temporary troop deployments from a military base which is the major employer in the rural Southern community. From this multi-disciplinary standpoint, impacts on a Southern rural community are analyzed both in terms of economic dependence of the local civilian population and the social consequences of the troops absence from the community during a deployment